Consciousness

The universe has consciousness in it. We humans are conscious.

Does consciousness mean that there is freewill?
A tree may have 100,000 leaves. It is not conscious of this.
Certainly not in the sense that it is aware of other possibilities; of having 100,001 or 99,999 leaves.
We, however, are conscious that we could have done things differently.
I believe that I could have chosen to have had tea instead of coffee.
Or, is this just an illusion?
Was I destined to ‘choose’ coffee just as the tree was destined to have 100,000 leaves.
The fact I can think of different scenarios doesn’t mean I had the freewill to choose them.
Is such reflection on past behaviour part of the pre-defined thought process to ensure that future behaviour is what it is destined to be?
Without freewill, is the subject/object split artificial & irrelevant?

Humans (& some other life forms) consciously group similar things together to make sense of the world.
We have to assume the present & future will have continuity with the past to survive.
We are grouping similar, not identical, things together.
To do this we abstract from reality.
We have concepts of pure forms.
Since similar things can be similar in more than one way, there can be many descriptions of reality.
Does this mean there is no one truth?
Some descriptions are better than others though, i.e. there is more evidence.Language attempts to communicate our thoughts (our groupings).
All languages are human (or other conscious being) inventions.
Isn’t mathematics also a language?
Isn’t logic a by-product of language?

What is science?Science relies on agreement on the grouping of similar things.
We have to have concepts, language, categories, mathematics, logic, etc.
Science shows the relationship between things (things we have defined!).
These relationships are theories/models of the universe.
Observations test these theories.
The theories can be disproved, but they can never be proved, can they?
Contradictory theories can both appear to be true.
A new better theory can replace both.
Our use of logic can be a handicap as it ignores time; things change.
Is this where the concept of dialectics is helpful?
Can there be a unified theory of the universe?
Can there be more than one unified theory?